The Truth About Innovation

  • New product development isn’t the same as innovation, and yet many product developers, beauty brands and marketers are using those terms interchangeably.
  • There are three forms of innovation—continuous, which requires no change in consumer behavior; dynamically continuous, which involves a major change in a minor behavior or minor change in a major behavior; and discontinous, which is disruptive to behavior and the industry.
  • In development, the vast majority of the time marketers identify a need in the marketplace and deliver a product that addresses that need. Seldom is the development technologically driven.

Natural ingredients come from everywhere, and many of them have multiple applications that meet a broad assortment of consumer needs. Every year there are a handful of popular ingredients that dominate new product development, and each year the list changes slightly. Natural ingredients are rather like fashion, and paraphrasing from TV’s Project Runway, “One day you are in, and the next you are out.”

A Google search of the term “new natural personal care ingredients” reveals a range of patented and branded ingredient combinations addressing existing needs, as well as lists of ingredients to avoid and the most popular ingredients. And when the word “new” was replaced by “innovative,” the list was largely the same.

Innovation Unveiled

But just because some of these ingredients are relatively new, does that make them “innovative”? It seems this word has been thrown around quite a bit and has lost much of its meaning, similar to the way that social media—and Facebook in particular—has somewhat diluted the word “friend.”

This begs the question, are these ingredients truly innovative, or is this just a story that product developers tell? Just because a botanical or ingredient blend is new or popular doesn’t necessarily mean that it is innovative in any real sense.

The term “innovation” has been used to describe all kinds of product developments, including underwhelming ones, and the colloquial understanding of the term “innovation” is that it means “new.” We can all likely agree that the telegraph, automobile, lightbulb, radio, television, computer and smartphone were all ground-breaking innovations, but what about each iteration of the iPhone? Is a new emollient truly innovative? A new natural preservative? A new, naturally derived active ingredient?

Innovation and Product Development

Product development is one of my favorite university courses to teach, and in this class we learn there are three forms of innovation.

  1. A continuous innovation describes a new product that requires almost no change in consumer behavior, so it represents very minor changes in an existing product type. An example of this would be an existing hand lotion product that features a new non-active ingredient. Or, if you prefer a technological example, each iteration of the iPhone would be continuous. Many experts do not consider a continuous innovation to be very innovative at all.
  2. A dynamically continuous innovation involves a major change in a minor behavior or a minor change in a major behavior. An example would be a hand lotion (either an existing product or a new one) that features an entirely new way of dispensing the liquid, such as moving from a jar to a pump. Or technologically speaking, it’s the difference between a tablet and a laptop.
  3. A discontinuous innovation can be very disruptive to the industry. An example in the beauty realm would be a product or a newly discovered ingredient that has an entirely new market application, such as hair regrowth. And in fact, the decade-old advent of skin and hair care products in the form of ingestible nutritional supplements may have been the last true discontinuous innovation in the beauty sector.

In most cases, it’s not really the ingredients that are innovative, but the finished product. And in every case, it is always the degree of consumer behavioral change required, and not the ingredient/product itself, that determines the type of innovation. It may sound academic, but what happens is that people in general become desensitized to words that they hear all the time such as “innovative,” and when they are underwhelmed by what they see, it serves to further numb the target market to the marketing message.

I think we can all agree now that the vast majority of new products are continuous innovations. A real ground-breaking product, featuring an entirely new ingredient with an entirely new application, can only be introduced once. After that, successive products will be dynamically continuous or continuous innovations. As such, in almost all cases, “hot” ingredients are merely popular ingredients.

Now let’s look at the patent process. In order to qualify for a patent in the U.S., an invention must be novel, involve an inventive step not obvious to a skilled person, and have an industrial application. If approved, the patent is exclusive for 20 years. Patents are awarded in beauty and personal care all the time, mostly in the form of process and composition of matter inventions. But the vast majority of these do not require changes in consumer behavior, and so they cannot be considered innovations. In fact, in too many cases, the changes are often things the consumer doesn’t even notice.

True Innovation

By now, the point of this article should be abundantly clear. We in the industry have overused the term “innovation” and are therefore somewhat desensitized to technological and product developments. Consumers barely even notice most of what we accomplish due to the continuous nature of our “innovations.”

Here is the rub. New product development in the beauty and personal care industry is really driven by needs and wants in the marketplace, not technology. This is known as a marketing concept—the dominant strategic approach in contemporary marketing, wherein marketers identify a need in the marketplace and deliver a bundle of features and benefits (a product) that addresses that need. Technological advancements are fine, but generally result in barely noticeable, incremental innovation. This means that product development is primarily under the purview of marketers because these professionals are responsible for assessing consumer needs. Research and development then follows the lead of marketing to ensure that what those folks are developing has a relevant market application and is something consumers actually want. Many firms learn this simple lesson too late and expend massive resources pushing something that doesn’t resonate in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, this is often lost on most industry people who have never taken business classes. New products (which fail 80–90% of the time) should be need-driven in almost all cases (excepting the area of needs consumers didn’t know they had in the first place, which is rare). A beauty company’s job is to address—and, in many cases, exceed—expectations in meeting the market need while differentiating its offerings from competitive and substitute products. This attempt at differentiation generally results in a whole heck of a lot of non-innovation, some continuous innovation, and an occasional dynamically continuous innovation, but rarely does it result in something that disrupts the industry, a discontinuous innovation.

Nevertheless, marketers, media and beyond will continue to push “the next big thing” as manufacturers look for the next big ingredient and retailers tailor their product mix to meet the demands of their customer base. I will take the road less travelled and remind everyone that new market applications are what spawns innovation in the beauty and personal care world, and not necessarily a new ingredient that meets an existing need.

So let’s begin talking about ingredients and products in terms of how consumers view them rather than “innovations” that do not matter to the marketplace. Indeed, market applications are crucial to justifying the use of certain ingredients as well as the development and commercialization of the products themselves. So, moving forward, may the marketing concept be with you.

Darrin C. Duber-Smith, MS, MBA, is president of Green Marketing, Inc. He has more than 25 years of expertise in marketing and management, including with natural, organic and green/sustainable products. He is a cofounder of the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, and he has published more than 70 articles. Duber-Smith also is a marketing professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver School of Business and an affiliate marketing professor at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He received the Wall Street Journal’s In-Education Distinguished Professor Award in 2009, the 2012 School of Business Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, and is author of Cengage Learning’s “KnowNow! Marketing” blog. [email protected], [email protected]

More in Ingredients